Communication devices and systems in general, and messaging systems in particular, continue to gain in popularity. Paging, instant messaging (IM), text messaging on cell phones (e.g., SMS) and multimedia messaging (MMS) are examples of messaging systems which have enjoyed popularity over the years. In order to enrich end-user experience and allow the end-user more freedom in choosing media formats, the capabilities of messaging services are continuously being improved. In making these improvements, however, designers should provide backward compatibility, i.e., such improvements should not lead to a situation where a user of a new messaging service or technology can only communicate with other users that are enabled for the new messaging service or technology. Therefore, efforts should be made to support interworking between new messaging technologies and well-established messaging technologies to provide for a smooth migration of new technologies into a world of integrated messaging.
With the advent of multimedia and 3G (and soon 4G) in the telecommunication area, it technically is no longer necessary to predicate the manner in which communications are performed on the type of media that is being communicated, i.e., 3G and 4G telecommunications are intended to be more media independent than previous generations of communications technology. Nonetheless, the introduction of new messaging functionality still, at least initially, tends to create a fragmentation of communication capabilities, as it is virtually impossible to upgrade all of the users in a system to the latest technology at the same time.
Each of these service centers has their own message store, their own user directory, their own notification server and, sometimes, their own O&M system and their own event scheduler. An event scheduler handles the incoming and outgoing messages for a messaging delivery system. If the messaging delivery system is used in a telecom network, event schedulers have telecom grade characteristics, e.g. High availability and Scalability, etc.
In a messaging delivery system, the event scheduler is designed to be co-located with the messaging server. The event scheduler handles the events associated to multiple traffic processors for event delivery of messages to user equipments (UEs). When a failure within traffic processors occurs or when a traffic processor is added to the messaging system, the traffic load has to be balanced between the remaining traffic processors for avoiding congestion within the traffic processors or underutilization of some traffic processors. Furthermore, the traffic load for the messaging server needs to be balanced in a short amount of time. Existing traffic load management solutions in massaging system fail to disclose a method and apparatus for load balancing of events.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a solution for load balancing between traffic processors in order to avoid the afore-described problems and drawbacks.